Something I'm disturbed about on EC forum

[SunnaB16]

I’m just the opposite. I like it when someone puts all their cards on the table.

DITTO!
In my own case, the screen name tries to say something, as well; as with many other CAF screen names.

 

[Aramis]

I cant get over how childish the labels people tag themselves with around here. For example ‘‘Orthodox in communion with rome’’ in their religious status. Why cant people just have Christian or Catholic in their status and just be done with it?

Or is there something I am ignorant of? am I reading it all and taking it up the wrong way?

You’re missing a HUGE part of it.

Catholic isn’t one “Church” but a communion of 22 churches, all which believe the same core beliefs, but explain them differently, have very different traditions, united into one magisterium. Each has separate hierarchy beneath the Pope, and control over its own liturgical and theological traditions.

And 19 of those have Orthodox sister-churches which are almost indistinguishable from themselves. (The exceptions being the Roman, Maronite, and Italo-Albanian churches.) Those sister churches are usually exceptionally close - the EC faithful have more in common with their expression of the faith than with the Roman one, and that’s natural, as they are usually the two sides of a schism caused by the movement to come to union.

I’m Catholic, but I’m not intellectually nor spiritually Roman. I’ve left the Roman Church for the Ruthenian. Not because I think the Roman Church is in error, but because the Roman symbolism falls flat for me, and always has, making it hard for me to avail myself of the graces of the Mass. Calling myself a Ruthenian before the paperwork comes back for signature would be ontologically incorrect, but claiming to be purely Roman would be equally dishonest. My religious identity is more of who I am than my ethnic one.

Once the paperwork is signed, My affiliation will change from its present “Catholic - Ruthenianized Roman” to “Ruthenian Catholic.”

I do consider myself in a sense “Orthodox in Communion with Rome” - my theology is that of the Orthodox save for the requirement of Union with the Pope. To the point that my Orthodox co-workers & friends accuse me of being more Orthodox than themselves. (And I’m a bit of a slacker… sad, ain’t it?)

That said, there are some, like Mardukm, who converted to Catholic, but do not consider it abandoning the Orthodox Church, but fulfilling the call to unity whilst still remaining Orthodox.

Others were born into the ECCs, but consider themselves Orthodox first, Catholic second… I perceive Alexander Roman to be an example of this.